Sunday, April 15, 2012

Movie Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I found this movie extremely boring and incredibly boring.

Barbara and I sat down to watch this snoozer around 8pm. By 820pm I was ready to call it a night and lay in bed to reevaluate my life and, more specifically, my movie watching hobby. We turned it off and watched an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. (more on that show in a later post)

This movie is about a boy who loses his dad in 9/11. The boy has Asperger Syndrome, so that is why this movie is supposed to be interesting. I understand that it could have been interesting, but I just couldn't get over how much explaining and thinking this kid had to communicate to us.

Quite simply, this movie is too slow. For the 20 minutes we watched we listened to 19 minutes of the kid talking about life. If I wanted to listen to a kid talk about life I would sit down and ask Miles about his day in Kindergarten.

The point at which I laughed out loud was when the kid did the old switcheroo with his mom's answering machine. The kid finds out that his dad died from his dad's messages on the answering machine. He crawls under the bed. His mom comes home and, in a panic, asks him if there are any messages. He says no. I say, "Yes, there are. There are at least 3. Go ahead and check. They're right down there in the kitchen on the answering machine. Your husband was downtown, you say? Well, if I were you, I wouldn't take your kid's word for it and I'd go check the machine."

But no, apparently she goes to sleep without checking the machine because later that night the kid goes out and buys a clone answering machine and switches it with the real one. Then he hides the one with the messages in his closet so that he can keep the memories for himself. So, the mother never finds out what happened to the dad. Why didn't she go and check the freaking answering machine! Your kid has Aspergers! He's not always telling you the whole truth. Your husband had a cell phone! Go check the machine!!!

We got past that part and moved into another silly section. What you have is the kid trying to track down someone named 'Black'. His method, understandably as a kid, is to look in the phone book. He finds 700 people with the last name Black. So, he goes door to door and, as it turns out, everyone with the last name 'Black' is really nice and welcoming, no matter what the situation. I'll have to remember that the next time I visit New York.

I might be exaggerating. We might have watched 45 minutes of this. It was heavy on the cheese. I think that they assumed that we'd like it just because someone died in 9/11. I didn't really feel it. I felt like they didn't really go all the way and just figured that we'd feel it. Thus, when the kid is wandering around trying to figure out the meaning of his life, I am stealing glances at Barbara trying to figure out the best time that I can try to convince her to turn it off. I found it, we did and I am happy about it.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

hated that movie.

I could NOT stand that kid. Not because of his portrayed aspergers...but, because he was an extremely annoying actor. Watching the "extras" on the DVD, I came to the conclusion that he is walking the the very fine line of "when I'm an adult, I'm either going to be a brilliant awesome person, or a brilliant and extremely annoying person that people want to punch".

He is fluent in mandarine, by the way. And won the kid version of the game show "Jeopardy". Which pretty much explains my rant.